Helen Pridmore

Helen Pridmore enjoys a career focused on contemporary scored music, experimental music and improvisation. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in December 2012, performing the music of John Cage with the American Symphony Orchestra. Helen has performed as a soloist at the Sound Symposium, NL; the OK.Quoi?! Contemporary Arts Festival, Sackville, NB; with LeHum Moncton; and in Fredericton, Montréal, Toronto, Sudbury, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton (New Music Edmonton), Calgary (Neworks Calgary), Vancouver (Western Front), Seattle (Wayward Music Series), and Victoria (Open Space). Helen’s solo CD Janet was released in 2012 on the Canadian Music Centre’s Centrediscs label. Her CD with clarinetist Wesley Ferreira …between the shore and the ships…, also a Centrediscs release, won an East Coast Music Award for Best Classical Recording in 2013.

With a special interest in new Canadian music, Helen has commissioned and premiered vocal works by Martin Arnold, Emily Doolittle, WL Altman, Helen Hall, and Ian Crutchley. She has premiered vocal music of Derek Charke, John Abram, Monica Pearce, André Cormier, Jim O’Leary and Robert Bauer; and has performed vocal works by composers from across Canada. Her 2018 solo recital at the Sound Symposium in Newfoundland featured an all-Canadian program. In the 2015-16 season, she premiered Goya: Opera, with music by WL Altman, libretto by David Fancy and live video by Ian Campbell, in Regina and in Mexico City.

As an extension of her work as an improviser, Helen has begun writing works for herself, based on structured improvisations. Her solo voice performance piece Sor Juana and the Silences was premiered in 2018 and has been presented in Canada and Mexico. A new solo work, Mother Calling, was created in 2020 and has been performed in Saskatoon, with more performances scheduled for 2024 in Regina as part of the RISER Regina Performance Series.

Helen has performed frequently with Victoria’s acclaimed Aventa Ensemble, and reunited with them in November 2021 for a special recording and performance of Philippe Leroux’s virtuosic Voi Rex. In January 2018 Helen was featured in the premiere of Michael Finnissy’s new opera Undivine Comedy, with Aventa. In 2012 she performed the North American premiere of Michael Finnissy’s Whitman, with the composer at the piano, and also worked with Aventa to present works by young composers at the IgNite! Festival. In 2015 Helen performed twice with Aventa, presenting Voi(Rex) in February and premiering a new work by Michael Finnissy in May.

Helen also performed Voi(Rex) with Ensemble 1534, a collective made up of Canada’s finest new music performers, in Ottawa (National Arts Centre) and Toronto (The Music Gallery) in 2013.

With the duo Sbot N Wo Helen creates improvisations in extended voice and electronics. Sbot N Wo has performed across Canada and has been broadcast numerous times; their CD Songs was released in 2015. The duo has also performed in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan.

A strong proponent of interdisciplinary work, Helen is currently working on two multi-media projects with composer Terri Hron and artists Jennifer Beattie, Philip Fortin, Rosabel Choi and Katherine Dowling. Ones of these projects, The Grim Keys, was premiered in 2022. The other, Out Loud, will premiere in Montréal in May 2024. She performed Mirror with artist Isabella Stefanescu, director Anne-Marie Donovan and computer engineer Klaus Engel, at the Open Ears Festival in Kitchener, ON in 2014 and at the IICSI Improvisation and Mobility Conference in Regina, 2017. With three other interdisciplinary artists, Helen created The Whale in August 2018: this moving, all-day performance and sound installation took place on the shores of the Bay of Fundy.

Helen was a member of Motion Ensemble, New Brunswick’s new music group, for more than ten years. Motion premiered many works by Canadian composers, including Martin Arnold, Juliet Palmer, alcides lanza, Sergio Barrosso, Emily Doolittle, Robert Lemay, Richard Gibson, Nicole Lizée, Tim Brady, Moiya Callahan, Michael Oesterle and many others. The ensemble performed across Canada: New Music Concerts Toronto, Sound Symposium, NUMUS, 5 Penny New Music Festival, Western Front, La chapelle du bon Pasteur (Montréal), OK.Quoi?! Contemporary Arts Festival, Scotia Festival, The Music Gallery, and many other venues and festivals. Motion Ensemble has released several CDs, including a contribution to the complete works of John Cage as issued by Mode Records. With Motion2, a trio including three former members of Motion Ensemble, Helen has performed in France, New Brunswick, and western Canada. Now a member of the Saskatoon Experimental Music Ensemble, Helen sings and creates structured improvisations for the group, which also presents workshops and community events.

Helen has also been a busy educator. She holds a B.Mus. from the University of Saskatchewan, a M.Mus. from the University of Toronto, and she earned her D.M.A. (Doctor of Musical Arts) at the Eastman School of Music. Helen also holds a Licentiate Diploma in Piano Performance from Trinity College, London (UK). After teaching at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick for 15 years, Helen moved to the University of Regina in 2014. There, she taught in the areas of music and creative technologies. Having taken early retirement from teaching in 2021, Helen now focuses on performing and creating.

Photo by Ian Campbell

Repertoire list to 2022